DevOps and Automation - A Boon for Manufacturing Sector

Before 2020, DevOps was valued at $6.78 billion and is projected to reach $57.90 billion by 2030, registering a CAGR of 24.2% growth from 2021 to 2030.

But what’s driving the explosion of DevOps?

The need for digitalization is one of the core reasons behind the DevOps explosion. In addition, DevOps will soon become a critical manufacturing element, with manufacturers seeking to expand, deliver goods faster, and drive innovation.

Let's uncover all about DevOps and how the manufacturing sector can harness the power of the DevOps model to accelerate business goals. 

What is the DevOps Model?

DevOps combines two words, ‘development’ and ‘operations.’ In essence, it is a collaboration between development and operation teams. But it is not just two words; it has many aspects.

• A shift of culture in how we deliver code, process, and technology.
• A continuous practice that strengthens with time
• A process that helps manufacturers innovate at a rapid pace
• A tool that delivers market-ready products
• A philosophy that continuously integrates people, businesses, and customers.

To fully understand how DevOps can be a boon for manufacturing, let's explore the core principles of DevOps.

Core DevOps Principles

• Software development lifecycle automation: This principle includes automating testing, builds, and other manual tasks that can slow the development lifecycle.
• Collaboration: At the base of DevOps lies collaboration and effective communication such that every member is aware.
• Short feedback loops: Continuous short feedback loops allow the DevOps team to look into customers' demands in real time.
• Continuous improvement and waste minimization: Highly functional DevOps teams excel at tracking metrics and reducing repetitive tasks to minimize release time or mean time to recovery.

How Can Manufacturers Leverage DevOps and Automation for Scaling?

1. Maximum Resource and Investment Utilization

Valued approximately 40 trillion dollars, the manufacturing industry produces a great deal of waste. So much that 20% of every dollar spent is wasted, adding up to 8 trillion dollars annually!

However, 20% of waste is not physical. Instead, it's a waste of economic resources. Inefficient processes, extended downtimes, and unavailability of data to pinpoint areas of mistakes are a few core reasons behind it.

Fortunately, DevOps can solve these issues. With continuous delivery and an integrated approach, DevOps takes a holistic approach instead of a traditional siloed one.

2. 360-Degree Infrastructure Automation

The manufacturing sector is flooded with complex hardware, software, and firmware systems that require regular upgrades for peak performance.

DevOps here plays a key role. At its core lies automation, which means engineers can automate routine testing and find bugs at the earliest stage. It also fastens up the software development cycle and improves product quality.

3. Heightened Security

According to the 2021 Global Threat Intelligence Report (GTIR), manufacturing cyberattacks increased 300%. As a result, manufacturing firms like Bridgestone and Nordex have been victims of these cyberattacks, resulting in a halt to production and a shutdown of systems.

DevOps helps heighten security in many ways, such as leveraging next-generation architectures like microservices and containers that reduce attack surfaces and enable quick reactions. In addition, by deploying apps using containers, attackers cannot compromise the entire system, as it doesn't give them control over other parts of the app.

4. Continuous Innovation and Building Future-Ready Products

Designing for the future is an essential principle of DevOps. This means manufacturers must plan for the long term, eliminate legacy software, migrate systems, and adopt the cloud if they want to adopt DevOps.

DevOps process enables manufacturers to build a scalable, resilient environment that produces quality products faster. Teams innovate and improve the entire customer journey by focusing on providing a killer customer experience.

5. Faster Mean Time to Recovery (MTTR)

Manufacturing downtimes are revenue killers. According to Forbes, manufacturers lose $50 billion a year with each unplanned downtime. Especially with legacy systems, these downtimes can continue for days, weeks, or sometimes even months.

DevOps has a solution to improve mean time to recovery through faster response to repair and recovery process. DevOps gathers information in real-time to determine areas of decreased performance and the effect of complete shutdowns due to mistakes. Through this data, manufacturers can avoid such incidents shortly.

DevOps Use Cases that reinforce its positive business outcomes:

1. United Airlines: United Airlines saved over $500,000 by switching to continuous testing thanks to the DevOps model.
2. HP: HP adopted continuous integration/continuous delivery, one of the core principles of DevOps, after analyzing that developers spent only 5% of the time developing code and the rest for planning, deploying, and testing. After DevOps implementation, the results were astonishing. The team ended up with 150 code commits daily, along with code changes in 75k - 100k lines daily!

Whether saving resources, automating processes, reducing errors, or improving mean time to recovery, DevOps has much to offer manufacturing sectors. Therefore, it is inevitable that manufacturers will gradually adopt DevOps as they become aware of the benefits. However, DevOps adoption requires a strong workforce, and that's where Clarion Technologies come in.

Challenges in DevOps

Challenge #1: Too Few Programmers

Many companies, particularly large start-ups, built their DevOps systems in-house, leading to a need for more skilled DevOps engineers. In turn, it increases hiring costs. Clarion Technologies resolves this issue by giving you access to the top 5% DevOps talent.

Challenge #2: Not Up To Date with Technologies

The need for a specific technology for DevOps complicates hiring a DevOps engineer. In addition, it can work with just any technology out there, resulting in friction. At Clarion Technologies, we resolve this issue by providing you with DevOps engineers and developers proficient in next-generation tech stacks like Kubernetes, Dockers, etc.

Challenge #3: Resource Wastage

We understand the industry's dynamic needs and thus allow you to ramp up or ramp down resources per your project needs. This will reduce waste and costs.

Wrapping Up:

Manufacturers have been at the mercy of manual processes and supply chains for years. But now it's time to take control, and DevOps and automation will play a key role here.

The results are promising, and opportunities limitless, thanks to faster time to market, reduced costs, and better quality.

However, bringing this change will require the support of an expert DevOps developer's workforce. And here, Clarion Technologies is your savior. Our unique hiring model helps us filter through the noise and find DevOps consulting experts and automation engineers with a solid DevOps background and experience that can get you closer to automated manufacturing. So contact us to hire skilled DevOps engineers today.